Getting our foot in the door to Moodle(Rooms)

My awesome co-worker and frequent co-conspirator Barbara Arnett has whipped up a little library resource search box that can be added to courses in our course management software (we just switched to Moodle.) We're currently working on convincing them to add it to the school's course shell template, so it will appear by default in every single course (where each prof will have the option to remove it, if they so desire.)

We're running into some trouble because we're using MoodleRooms to host the CMS, and apparently they charge extra for this sort of thing, but I have to imagine that this would really be useful for students. In the past, the course shells included a link to the library's homepage, with no explanation of how to use the site once they got there. We never really analyzed click-throughs from Blackboard (our old CMS), but the link was fairly buried (as opposed to having the search box prominently located on the side of every screen, as would be the case in Moodle.)

Is anyone else working on something like this? Did you have any trouble getting your school to add it to the template? Do you think it will increase online resource usage?

SCREENSHOTS (click to embiggen):

library link in Blackboard, located only under "Course Content"

library search box in Moodle, located in right-hand column of every page

Search Bookmarklet Code Files

In case you've been meaning to play around with creating your own library search bookmarklet, but needed a little "push", I've created a compressed folder of all the code files you'll need to do it, along with a ReadMe.txt with the directions. I tried to make it as simple as possible, so let me know if you try and it it works!

oneSearch bookmarklet @ LibTech 2011

On March 17th (this Thursday,) I'll be presenting at the Library Technology Conference on the oneSearch bookmarklet tool created by Barbara Arnett and I.

Barbara won't be able to make it out to Minnesota (she'll be presenting the bookmarklet to the NJLA 2011 Technology Innovation Award committee,) but because we want to be as practical as possible in our presentations, she put together a quick reference for the three parts of the bookmarklet (you don't actually need the third piece, it just creates a nice button for users to drag and drop into their browser, as opposed to a simple link.)

Below is the code you'd need to get started working on your own browser-based search bookmarklet:


(1)HTML, (2)Javascript & (3)CSS:


1 - HTML to display bookmarlet on your webpage:

(edit this line: {document.body.appendChild(document.createElement('script')).src='http://www.stevens.edu/library/js/search.js';}
so that the red text links to the JavaScript file you place on your server)


2 - Javascript to sit on your server (sits in search.js, referenced in bookmarklet HTML)

(edit this line: _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXXX-1']);
so that the red text reflects your own Google Analytics account number (you can also find this complete code within GA, in actions->edit->check status,)
and this line: var searchString='http://ezproxy.stevens.edu/form?qurl=http://XXXXXXXX.cs....&field=title&term='+(Ti);
so that the red text reflects your own search URL, which you can get from your catalog, database or federated search vendor)

(Note: if you don't want to use Google Analytics, just remove all the code before the line: var Ti=document.title.replace('- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia','');)


3 - CSS needed for the button:

(You can do this as inline CSS or a separate stylesheet. Just replace the background image with your own image file.)

-------------------------------------------------------------
***OR, if you'd rather just download all the files, edit them, and place move them to the appropriate locations on your server, you can download the file packet (with instructions in a ReadMe.txt file.)***
-------------------------------------------------------------

Presentation slides:

Bridging the gap from Wikipedia to scholarly sources: a simple discovery solution

One note: when we developed the bookmarklet, we were beta-testing Ebsco Discovery Service. We have since switched to Serial Solutions' Summon, but while that's being configured, the bookmarklet used our integrated search (also a Serial Solutions product.)

On the down-side, this has caused some inconsistency in our screenshots (the slides feature EDS screenshots, since we don't have full access to Summon yet.) However, this does emphasize the importance of having the full code reside on your server, as we've been able to make the required adjustments to the code without users having to re-install the tool.